Slate: Sanders Is Delusional if He Thinks He Can Keep His Promise on Mass Incarceration

[Cali_Democrat]

By Leon Neyfakh

After a number of Democratic debates in which criminal justice got barely any air time, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent several minutes agreeing with each other Thursday night about holding police officers accountable for criminal misconduct, getting rid of racial disparities in sentencing, and bringing down the prison population.

On this last point, Sanders trotted out an absurd promise he has used several times before: that by the end of his first term, the United States will no longer be the world leader in incarceration.

What Sanders means by this is that under just four years of his magical leadership, the U.S. will bring down its jail and prison population by about 600,000 people. Where does that figure come from? Consider that the No. 2 spot on the list of countries with the most prisoners in the world right now is China, and it has about 1.66 million people behind bars. The U.S., by comparison, has about 2.3 million.

Sanders did not mention during his remarks how he plans to make the leap from 2.3 million to fewer than 1.66 million. But regardless of what he has in mind, it’s pure fantasy for several reasons. Chief among them is that the president of the United States has no direct control over most of the nation’s correctional facilities. This is because jails, which currently hold fewer than 745,000 people, are under local control, and state prisons, which hold about 1.35 million, are under state control. That leaves the federal prison system—the only one that the federal government is actually in charge of—with 210,000 people, or about 10 percent of the pie.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/11/bernie_sanders_can_t_fulfill_the_debate_promise_he_just_made_on_mass_incarceration.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Dupe-derp.

[NurseJackie]

2. I couldn't agree more!

[RKP5637]

3. I too thought it sounded aggressively unrealistic! n/t

[Cali_Democrat]

5. Yup. It's nice to see people look closely at the actual numbers

I think we all agree there's an incarceration problem, but making promises you know you can't keep is not the way to go about achieving criminal justice reform.

We need realistic solutions to a real problem.

[daleanime]

4. And we all know that he only managed 500,000 people released....

it would be a massive failure.

[SheenaR]

6. Dig in

This is Cali D's second OP on this today.... I say we will hit four by 7 EST

[frylock]

8. I'll lay $20 on the over.

[drray23]

7. this is the premise of his whole campaign.

Promise very attractive stuff, most of which impossible to achieve given the separation of powers and the control congress has on passing laws..

Apparently, its enough to make people dream and actually believe he will achieve all of what he says he will. Why did not senator Sanders start his revolution 40 years ago then? Why did he just decide to run for president this year? After all, other reformists such as Ron Paul have been running every cycle (and no, i do not support Ron Paul). If he recognizes that his revolution will take a while to achieve, he should have started earlier.

[Cali_Democrat]

10. Exactly

Either he's bullshitting or he's got a fundamental misunderstanding of how our government actually functions.

[AzDar]

13. You're right... we should settle for a Kissinger-loving, classified-email compromising...

shape-shifting, Iraq-War cheerleading 1%'er...

... Or NOT!!

Feel The Bern 2016

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. The US is the world leader in incarceration by more than one measure.

Not merely absolute number of prisoners but incarceration rate per capita (technically second to Seychelles, which has 89K people). Reducing the rate of incarceration per capita would accomplish Sanders' stated goal.

[Motown_Johnny]

11. You keep posting the same dishonest crap. We all know how the "Big Lie" works.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration/

^snip^

According to the Bureau of Prisons, there are 207,847 people incarcerated in federal prisons. Roughly half (48.6 percent) are in for drug offenses. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are 1,358,875 people in state prisons. Of them, 16 percent have a drug crime as their most serious offense. There were also 744,600 inmates in county and city jails. (The BOP data is current as of July 16. From BJS, the latest jail statistics are from midyear 2014, and the latest prison statistics from year-end 2013.) That’s an incarceration rate of about 725 people per 100,000 population.





That would be over 100,000 from federal prisons and about 217,000 from state prisons plus the county and city jails and those are numbers from 2014 and 2013. 600,000 by January 2021 is easily within reach.

[Cali_Democrat]

12. Clearly you're failing to grasp the point of the article.

Chief among them is that the president of the United States has no direct control over most of the nation’s correctional facilities. This is because jails, which currently hold fewer than 745,000 people, are under local control, and state prisons, which hold about 1.35 million, are under state control. That leaves the federal prison system—the only one that the federal government is actually in charge of—with 210,000 people, or about 10 percent of the pie.

The president has no control over state and local correctional facilities. Most prisoners are in state and local facilities. The president cannot compel states to release their prisoners so his promise is full of hot air.

Read the article more carefully before replying next time.

[Motown_Johnny]

14. He can commute sentences of federal crimes,

Yes, he has no direct control over state and local facilities but federal aid can be withheld.

You may as well be arguing that we will never get seat belt laws because the Federal government doesn't have the power to make the states pass them.

That was also insane.

[kstewart33]

16. But it's true today. That's what matters. nt

[kstewart33]

15. Very interesting information.

Sounds like it is completely impossible. After watching the debate, I wondered if a post-victory tendency applies to Bernie: an impressive victory often leads the victor to get way ahead of himself.

Thanks for posting.

[Alfresco]

17. Another unrealistic promise.